Hubble Captures the Stars

Stellar Neighbors

The Hubble Space Telescope has beamed hundreds of thousands of images from its orbit above the Earth's atmosphere since it launched in 1990. They've shed light on many of the great mysteries of astronomy, including the age of the universe, the identity of quasars and the existence of dark energy.

Here are Wired News' picks of Hubble's best. Check here for updates as the telescope transmits more data.

Left:

Swirls of gas and dust reside in this ethereal-looking region of star formation imaged by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. This majestic view of LH 95, located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, reveals a region where low-mass, infant stars and their much more massive stellar neighbors reside.

Image courtesy of NASA

Outbursts of a Dying Star

Using NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the W.M. Keck Observatory in Kameula, Hawaii, astronomers have learned that the gaseous outflow from one of the brightest super-sized stars in the sky is more complex than originally thought.

The outbursts are from VY Canis Majoris, a red supergiant that is also classified as a hypergiant because of its very high luminosity. The eruptions have formed loops, arcs and knots of material moving in many different directions. The star has had many outbursts over the past 1,000 years as it nears the end of its life.

Image courtesy of NASA

New Stars Strut Their Stuff

This new image from Hubble shows bright blue, newly formed stars that are blowing a cavity in the center of a star-forming region in the Small Magellanic Cloud.

Image courtesy of NASA

Hot, Hot Hydrogen

Hubble has allowed astronomers to study the layer-cake structure in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star for the first time. Hubble discovered a dense upper layer of hot hydrogen gas where the super-hot planet's atmosphere is bleeding off into space.

This is an artist's illustration of the extrasolar planet, designated HD 209458b, which is unlike any world in our solar system. It completes an orbit around its host star every 3.5 days. It is about the size of Jupiter. Unlike Jupiter, HD 290458b is so hot that its atmosphere is "puffed up." Starlight is heating the planet's atmosphere, causing hot gas to escape into space. Astronomers used Hubble to analyze the starlight that filtered through the planet's atmosphere. Imprinted on the starlight is information about the atmosphere's structure and chemical makeup.

Image courtesy of NASA

Cluster Luster

This image shows the diverse collection of galaxies in a galaxy cluster called Abell S0740, located more than 450 million light-years away in the constellation Centaurus. The giant elliptical galaxy ESO 325-G004 looms at the cluster's center. This galaxy is as massive as 100 billion suns.

Hubble resolves thousands of globular star clusters orbiting ESO 325-G004. Globular clusters are compact groups of hundreds of thousands of stars that are gravitationally bound together. At the galaxy's distance they appear as pinpoints of light contained within the diffuse halo. Other elliptical and spiral galaxies are also pictured.

Image courtesy of NASA

White Dwarf's Last Hurrah

This image shows the colorful "last hurrah" of a star like our sun. The star is ending its life by casting off its outer layers of gas, which formed a cocoon around the star's remaining core. Ultraviolet light from the dying star then makes the material glow.

The burned-out star, called a white dwarf, appears as a white dot in the center. Our own galaxy, the Milky Way, is littered with these stellar relics, called planetary nebulae. Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 captured this image of planetary nebula NGC 2440 on Feb. 6, 2007.

Image courtesy of NASA

Jupiter's True Colors

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope took this true-color view of Jupiter in support of the New Horizons mission. The image was taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on Feb. 17, 2007. Jupiter's trademark belts and zones of high- and low-pressure regions appear in crisp detail. Circular convection cells can be seen at high northern and southern latitudes. Atmospheric features as small as 250 miles (400 km) across can be discerned.

Image courtesy of NASA

A Galaxy Ripped Apart

Hubble, in collaboration with several other ground- and space- based telescopes, has captured a galaxy being ripped apart by a galaxy cluster's gravitational field and harsh environment.

The finding sheds light on the mysterious process by which gas-rich spiral-shaped galaxies might evolve into gas-poor irregular- or elliptical-shaped galaxies over billions of years. The new observations also reveal one mechanism for forming the millions of "homeless" stars seen scattered throughout galaxy clusters.

Image courtesy of NASA

Interstellar Dust Spiral

This Hubble view of the nearby barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672 reveals details in the galaxy’s star-forming clouds and dark bands of interstellar dust. NGC 1672 is more than 60 million light years away in the direction of the southern constellation Dorado.

Image courtesy of NASA

Cold, Cold Hydrogen

A "pillar" of cold hydrogen approximately one light year tall towers above the wall of molecular cloud. The 2.5 million-year-old star cluster called Trumpler 14 appears at the right side of the image. A small nugget of cold molecular hydrogen, called a Bok globule, is silhouetted against the star cluster.

Image courtesy of NASA

New Star Dust Laces Great Gas Pillar

A towering "mountain" of cold hydrogen gas laced with dust is the site of new star formation in the Carina Nebula. The great gas pillar is being eroded by the ultraviolet radiation from the hottest newborn stars in the nebula.

Image courtesy of NASA

Carina Nebula Mosaic

This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of neutral hydrogen. Color information was added with data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blue to oxygen emission.

Image courtesy of NASA

Star Swarm

This Hubble telescope image of a dense swarm of stars shows the central region of the globular cluster NGC 2808.

Globular clusters are the homesteaders of our Milky Way Galaxy, born during our galaxy's formation. They are compact swarms of typically hundreds of thousands of stars held together by gravity.

Image courtesy of NASA

Two Galaxies Collide, Ripple Into Cosmic Tsunami

A rare and spectacular head-on collision between two galaxies appears in this Hubble true-color image of the Cartwheel Galaxy, located 500 million light-years away in the constellation Sculptor. The new details of star birth resolved by Hubble provide an opportunity to study how extremely massive stars are born in large fragmented gas clouds.

The striking ring-like feature is a direct result of a smaller intruder galaxy -- possibly one of two objects to the right of the ring -- that careened through the core of the host galaxy. Like a rock tossed into a lake, the collision sent a ripple of energy into space, plowing gas and dust in front of it. Expanding at 200,000 miles per hour, this cosmic tsunami leaves in its wake a firestorm of new star creation. Hubble resolves bright blue knots that are gigantic clusters of newborn stars and immense loops and bubbles blown into space by exploding stars (supernovae).

Image courtesy of NASA

Dark Matter Ghosting

The ring-like structure is evident in the blue map of the cluster's dark matter distribution. The map is superimposed on a Hubble image of the cluster. The ring is one of the strongest pieces of evidence to date for the existence of dark matter, an unknown substance that pervades the universe.

Image courtesy of NASA

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